He woke in a sweat, not sure at first where he was, his heart slamming against his chest like a caged animal. This one had been bad, so real even now parts of his mind were still trapped in the dream.
Mary Beth lay beside him, her bosom rising and falling under the sheets in a peaceful rhythm, while out in the dark the Pacific pounded out its own rhythm, persistent in its ancient task, reducing North America to sand one grain at a time.
Kyle slipped through the unlit house with practiced precision, taking his accustomed place alone in the living room, the eternal Pacific below his only company. A storm was coming, a bad one. Kyle could feel it. The wind raced in from the sea carrying cold steel rain and sleet. But even in a storm the ocean calmed him as no drug ever did, brought him a relief no therapy could offer. He let the sound of the surf wash over him, cleansing his soul, carrying away sins real and imagined, carrying his nightmare far out to sea to sink into the eternal abyss, never to bother him again. It was a pleasant thought, more of a mantra, really, repeated night after night over the years.
He couldn't remember a time when the Pacific hadn't been there for him, to calm him, to ease his pain. His life had been a beautiful, terrible thing, passing like a warm summer's day; seeming to last forever, then done too soon. Not that his life was over, but he was more surviving, coping, than living, just treading water, barely keeping his chin on the sunny side of the surface. Mary Beth was his only hold on reality, the only reason he had to keep going all these years.
Of course, Mary Beth knew none of this. She knew about his insomnia, and suspected depression, but she didn't know the truth of it, the darkness lurking just below the surface of his mind, threatening to drag him down into a void he knew would never release him once he succumbed.
His father always said character is who you are when you're alone in the dark. Kyle wondered what kind of man cowers alone in the dark fighting memories and nightmares, refusing to seek help, even from the one person he promised to share his life with. A sick man, he decided. A sick, terrified fool of a man.
Along towards three he saw the lights; twin beams of yellow bobbing through the rain as the car made its way up the narrow, curving lane below, climbing the hill to the Marsten house. A woman and a man carrying a small child fled the car, sloshing through the rain, their headlight shadows dancing across the house before disappearing inside.
It couldn't be the Marstens though, they were elderly summer people from Portland who only used the house in July and August, letting a local Realtor rent it out to tourists the rest of the year. But winter is not prime tourist season on the Oregon coast: the rain is cold and constant, with wind gusts violent enough to lay a grown man flat. So, despite the realtor's best efforts, the Marsten place sat empty from late fall till early spring as the tiny village of Manitas hibernated through the long winter months, dreaming of the return of the tourists and their money come spring.
Lights flicked on and off around the house below as its new occupants made themselves at home, finally going off for good around three-thirty. Kyle crawled into bed around four, wondering why anyone would bring a child out here in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, in the middle of a storm.
Dawn seemed to sneak up on the village as the sun refused to put in an proper appearance, lurking instead behind thick gray clouds, leaving the village immersed in near twilight. Kyle had been up since six, drinking coffee, watching the Pacific reveal itself in the growing light.
"What time is it?" Mary Beth yawned from the bedroom door, her sleep-hair a flaming red halo.
"After nine, sleepy head."
"At least I slept," she said. "You?"
"Not really. Up at two, in bed by four, up again at six. Not bad for me." He didn't mention the dream. He never did.
"We have new neighbors," he pointed. "Down at the Marsten's. They came in last night under cover of darkness. Very mysterious. I'm thinking some sort of sleeper cell."
"It would have to be a sleeper cell to come to Manitas in November," she laughed. "Who are they really?"
"Don't know," he said, reaching into the closet.
"And just where do you think you're going?"
"Have to be friendly, love," he shrugged into his coat. "Bring out the welcome wagon and all that."
"You've got to be kidding. You're going out in this? You'll get soaked."
"If everybody in Oregon stayed inside every time it rained nothing would ever get done. Besides," he winked, "if this keeps up it won't rain."
"Oh, no," she moaned. "That joke was old when your dad told it twenty years ago."
"Classics never age, my dear," he laughed. "Anyway, a squeeze and a kiss and I'm off to the Marsten's."
"You're off, alright," she giggled, slapping away his groping hand. "And too curious for your own good. But," she purred, "if you come back quick I'll warm you up, and I don't mean coffee."
Kyle parked his rust-infested Jeep next to the shiny new Audi in the Marsten's drive. A child's car seat was strapped in the back; a parking permit for a large Portland law firm hung from the rear-view.
A thirty-something man answered on the third knock. His eyes were distant and vacant, reminding Kyle of the poor souls you see on the ten o'clock news who've just survived a tornado or earthquake and their brains haven't quite gotten a handle on the crappy hand life has just dealt them.
"Sorry to bother you," Kyle stuck out a paw. "Kyle Jennings. I live straight up the hill from you. The big house with all the glass. You can see it from here," he pointed. "I saw you come in last night. Can't sleep sometimes. Insomnia. Terrible problem, just terrible."
The man shook Kyle's offered hand unenthusiastically, remaining silent.
"Sorry," Kyle said. "I'm rambling. I do that sometimes. Sorry. And your name is?"
"Troxler," the man said slowly. "Dennis Troxler."
"Um, Dennis, do you mind if I step in for a bit? I'm getting soaked out here."
Troxler looked over his shoulder before stepping aside. "I guess so."
An attractive but grave looking young woman materialized behind Troxler, a small girl peeping out from behind her, the child's porcelain doll face framed by coal black hair, her sea-green eyes fairly glowing with curiosity. She smiled at Kyle's wink. He had a real soft spot for little girls.
"Dennis, who is it?" The woman's voice was cold and formal, as if speaking to the hired help. "Is something wrong?"
"No, Monica," Troxler answered. "Just someone welcoming us to the neighborhood."
"Well," Kyle stammered, suddenly longing for the relative warmth of the freezing rain. "Sorry for the intrusion. Just wanted to say 'howdy' and let you know if you need anything, anything at all, just let us know. We're in the house on the hill with all the glass."
"We're fine," the woman sniffed. "We have everything we need."
"So," Kyle said. "I guess I'll be saying 'goodbye' then."
"Goodbye then," Troxler held the door for him.
"I'm telling you, babe," Kyle said, slipping naked between the sheets for his promised warm up. "They're weird."
"You should know weird," Mary Beth teased. "Now shut up and take me, you stud!"
Afterwards, Kyle sat in his chair overlooking the ocean while Mary Beth rattled around in the kitchen preparing brunch. The rain was coming harder now, ripping over the house in kamikaze waves that shook the glass walls with each gust. Kyle flipped a switch and steel shutters slid smoothly in to place, leaving only one floor to ceiling pane uncovered.
"Tell me about the little girl," Mary Beth said, handing him a steaming cup. "Scootch over."
Kyle scootched as his wife snuggled down beside him.
"Five or six maybe," he said. "Dark hair, very pale, with the most unusual sea-green eyes. She's a pretty little thing."
"Five or six," Mary Beth said from a far off place.
Kyle knew what she was thinking: He was thinking it too.
"Don't do this to yourself, babe," he said gently.
"Her birthday's coming up," Mary Beth went on, a single tear rolling down her cheek.
"I know." He kissed the tear away, wishing he could kiss her pain away with it.
"She'd be twenty-one this year," Mary Beth sniffed. "If only..."
"If only..." he whispered.
If only Kyle hadn't insisted on driving through the night on their way back to the city. If only they'd stayed five minutes longer at the rest stop. If only he'd seen the truck weaving across the center line a split second sooner. There were more "if only's" than Kyle could count. They say time heals all wounds but that's a lie people tell you when they don't know what else to say. Fifteen years of pain and the wounds were as fresh as ever. There was no healing, only coping, and some days he was barely able to hold on, staying just this side of crazy. There wasn't a day went by Kyle didn't pray to God to take it all back, to leave their little girl alone, to take him instead.
Their food sat in the kitchen, cold and forgotten as Kyle held his sobbing wife till the raging Pacific swallowed the sun in its angry waves.
The storm intensified over the next couple of days. Kyle and Mary Beth stayed inside, warm and snug, riding out the storm as they had so many times before. By Friday, though, the pantry began to run low and Kyle was forced out into the weather to replenish their stock. Mary Beth wanted to go with him, but he managed to talk her out of it.
The road was a mud river made more treacherous by fallen trees and flows of oozing mud washing down from the hillsides. Mr. Connelly, the owner of Manitas' one and only grocery store, was just closing up when Kyle burst in. He hurriedly grabbed the items on Mary Beth's list, thanked the old man for his patience and headed back into the storm.
There wasn't a single car on the road. It seemed the majority of Manitas' residents had the common sense to stay in out of the rain. All except Kyle and a lone figure tramping through the mud. Kyle swerved to avoid the idiot.
"Excuse me," Kyle yelled through the window. "Do you need help?"
The man turned slowly. It was Dennis Troxler.
"Dennis?" Kyle hollered against the wind. "Get in. I'll take you home."
Troxler slid in, water and sand pooling in the seat. He looked bad, unshaven, eyes glazed and distant, soaking wet and shaking. He reminded Kyle of the junkies in downtown Portland, all strung out, bumming change to finance their next fix.
"What in God's name are you doing out here?" Kyle demanded as the man crawled into the Jeep.
"God has nothing to do with it," Troxler said hoarsely, which would have been an odd thing for anyone else to say but seemed perfectly normal coming from this bird.
"Where's your car?"
"Slid off the road. Had to walk. Had to go out. Groceries. Had to get food."
"That's weird," Kyle said. "I was just at the store. Old man Connelly said I was his only customer all day."
"Must have been a different store," Troxler said.
"There's only one," Kyle frowned. "And what's with the sand? You're covered in it. Were you down on the beach?"
"I had to go there. He's there."
"The beach is no place to be in a storm, pal," Kyle said. "It's dangerous."
"More than you know." The man looked at Kyle, studying him, sizing him up. Kyle felt like a bug stuck on a pin.
"Listen," Kyle said. "If you're in trouble, maybe I can help. Sometimes it helps to talk stuff out, you know?"
The Jeep's wipers slapped away at the rain to little effect while Kyle waited for his strange new neighbor to speak.
"We were here before, you know," Troxler said at last, staring into the rain. "Six years ago. We were trying to make a baby but we couldn't. We needed help."
Kyle's thoughts flashed to the little girl. Five or six years old. It fit. "It was raining then, too," Troxler said.
"We get a lot of rain."
"He likes the rain. He rides the storms."
"Who? Who's 'he'?"
"The Old One. That's what we call Him anyway. I never could pronounce His real name. Probably no one alive can."
It was then Kyle realized Troxler was saying "Him" with a capital 'H'. Interesting.
Once Troxler started talking he couldn't seem to stop. On and on he went, mumbling about sea gods, ancient demons, human sacrifice. Weird stuff, sick stuff, scary stuff, but what freaked out Kyle the most was how deadly serious Dennis Troxler seemed to be about it.
"We owe a debt that must be repaid," Troxler said. "We owe Him a life."
Kyle squirmed in his seat. "You're not going to do some kind of animal sacrifice on the beach or something, are you?" he asked.
Troxler turned his eyes to the raging storm. "No, not an animal."
"Listen," Kyle said, trying to appease the man. "Maybe you could come back this summer and do your little ritual then, when the weather's a bit nicer. How's that sound?"
"But He demands payment. It is time and He will not be denied. Listen," Troxler's voice softened forcing Kyle to lean in close to hear him over the rain. "My wife did her dissertation on pre-Columbian cultures, specifically the earliest humans to cross over Berengia twenty-four thousand years ago."
"Berengia? You mean the Bering Land Bridge, between Alaska and Russia, right?" Kyle said. "Don't look so surprised: I read a lot."
"Anyway," Troxler went on, "we were trying to get pregnant, we were out here for vacation, and she wanted to try this ritual she'd come across in her studies. It was a fertility ritual associated with this ancient god of the ocean. I love my wife, Kyle, and I'd do anything for her, so..."
"You mean you tried it? You tried to summon an ancient god from the depths of the Pacific?" Kyle stammered.
"We didn't just try, Kyle – we succeeded. We summoned the monster from its depths."
"Oh, God." Kyle's blood went cold. As Twilight Zone as all this sounded, something in the man's voice made it all too believable.
"I don't think either of us really understood what we'd done, what we'd agreed to, but when we got back to Portland Monica found out she was pregnant."
"Dear God! You're going to sacrifice your daughter?" Kyle blurted.
"No!" Troxler's eyes flashed feverishly bright. "That's what He wants, that's what Monica wants, but I'm going to offer myself in her place. I can't do it. I'd rather die than lose her. I don't expect you to understand."
"Oh, I understand better that you can possibly know. You don't have a monopoly on pain, pal. The world's full of it; we all get our share."
"I'm sorry," Troxler croaked. "I didn't mean to..."
"Forget about it. We all have issues. Yours just happens to be a horrible sea monster from the depths of Hell."
Troxler didn't laugh. Neither did Kyle. Troxler took Kyle's arm with an uncomfortably firm grip. "You don't know me," he said, "and I shouldn't ask, but I literally have no one else to turn to. I can't even trust my own wife. I need you to take care of her, no matter what happens. Can you do that? Can you take care of my little girl after I'm gone?"
"I know some people who can help you," Kyle said at length. Mary Beth's brother was a psychiatrist in Portland. Not exactly a Ghostbuster, but it was the best Kyle could come up with.
"No!" Troxler exploded in frustration. "It's too late. There's no one else. It has to be you. Promise me you'll take care of her! Swear to God you'll protect her! Swear to me, Kyle! Swear! Swear!"
Kyle swore.
Mary Beth tried to call her brother but the lines to Portland were down. Worse still, the radio said the highway was closed due to mud slides. Manitas was effectively cut off from the outside world.
The nightmare was different this time; Michelle was in her hospital bed, her pretty blue eyes clouded by pain, fear and drugs. Her pale hand reached for her daddy but as Kyle's fingers touched hers, her tiny face shimmered and morphed into the little Troxler girl's. The child screamed as her tiny body slipped down into the bed, her head disappearing into the sheets as the bed swallowed her. Kyle pulled at the sheets, ripping the mattress apart, but she was gone.
Kyle spent the rest of the night alone in the dark, crying for his dead daughter and the pretty little girl alone down there in the dark with her lunatic parents.
Morning finally came but did little to alter his mood. Once again the sun proved incapable of breaking through the gloom, making eight in the morning feel like eight at night. A huge bank of thick clouds had piled up a mile off shore, forming a wall of black and gray a mile high. In the center, a dark angry mass roiled and churned, a malevolent cyclopian eye glowering at tiny Manitas.
Kyle tried the radio, hoping to catch the weather but nothing came in; not the little local station up the coast nor the big fifty-thousand watter in Portland. The TV and phone weren't working either. The wind howled in maniacal fury as the house shuddered under Mother Nature's onslaught. The lights flickered and died.
Mary Beth came out of the bedroom, her eyes wide. Kyle had always felt safe in this house with its concrete piers and steel shutters, but this storm was different. Mary Beth felt it too. They held each other close through the day as the house shook, unable to talk except in shouts barely audible over the shrieking wind.
Towards evening the wind seemed to back off a bit and Kyle decided to chance a look outside. He raised a shutter by hand, just high enough to get a good look. He must have yelled because Mary Beth came running and together they looked down in dumb amazement at the empty slab of jagged concrete where the Marsten house once stood, water geysers shooting from tangled pipes. The storm had been very selective – no other house had been touched.
Kyle instinctively grabbed for the phone, remembered it was dead, then headed for the door.
"Oh no!" Mary Beth screamed above the wind. "You are not going out there!"
Kyle turned, taking her face in his hands, kissing her gently.
"I love you," was all he said before stepping into the storm.
The road was blocked by downed trees and power lines, forcing Kyle to make his way down on foot, slipping and falling with nearly every step. The only thing keeping him going was the thought of the little girl out there somewhere in the storm, wet, cold, scared to death, maybe hurt. He refused to believe she was dead, that all three of their bodies were probably lying twisted and broken in a heap somewhere or washed out to sea. He could hear her in his head, crying out to him to help her. And in his mind he saw the little girl with the sea-green eyes being swallowed by the ocean waves.
By the time he reached the slab, his body was beyond exhaustion, his vision blurred, his face burning with cold. He stumbled around blindly, calling over the wind for Troxler, his wife, the girl, but they weren't there. It was madness to be anywhere near the shore but in his gut he knew that's where he'd find them.
It took all the strength he had, but at last he tumbled onto the cold hard sand and lay there, unable to move as the wind and the rain and the waves threw themselves at him in their fury. He struggled to his feet only to be laid low by the wind. He tried again, this time staying on hands and knees. The wind punished him for his insolence but he managed to crawl forward, pausing frequently to gather his ebbing strength. It suddenly occurred to him he might never see Mary Beth again, that his body could be washed out to sea and no one would ever know he'd tried his best and failed.
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